Cane River.

Cane River by Lalita Tademy Warner Books, January 2001, $24.95, ISBN 0-446-52732-7

In her debut novel, Cane River, Lalita Tademy admits that she grew up feeling somewhat judgemental of her great-grandmother Emily, one of four central characters in this sweeping saga. In addition to bearing five children out of wedlock with a Frenchman who'd settled nearby in the Cane River area of Louisiana, great-grandmother Emily was also color-struck; so much so in fact, that she discouraged two of her daughters from marrying brown-skinned suitors.

Fortunately for readers, however, q was able to suspend judgement and delve deep into the past of her great-grandmother, as well as the lives of the three matriarchs who came before her. Tademy's unremarkable but adequate writing style is compensated for by the wealth of content that she weaves into her ancestral story. We are first introduced to Elizabeth and her daughter Suzette, both born into slavery. The other two ancestral characters, Philomene and Emily, were born with physical freedom but remained emotionally enslaved by racism and segregation.

Tademy, a former vice president for a Fortune 500 high-technology company in Silicon Valley, lived a life light years away from the women who came before her. Yet, haunted by the details of a brief two-page family history written two decades before by a great-cousin, she quit her job in 1995 and began interviewing family members and local historians in Louisiana. Tademy describes her work as fiction that is rooted in research, historical fact, and family love. She has woven throughout her epic some of the old newspaper reports, photographs, deeds, wills, and other documents that she uncovered in her search. Folded into the story, like egg whites that allow a cake to rise, these documents enrich the blend of fact and fiction.

Tademy's ability to suspend judgement is central to the power of this book. In addition to portraying the lives of the women who came before her, she also allows us to peer into the minds of the whites whose lives mingled with theirs. This required courage. So many of the actions of the white characters may have otherwise seemed beyond our understanding. While Tademy certainly offers no apologies on behalf of her white ancestors, she does manage to make them human.

Much like the heinous institution of slavery and the rampant and bitter segregation that followed on the heels of Emancipation, there are complexities in the black/white relationship that deserve our attention if we are ever to truly come to terms with our emotional legacies. The psychological impact of slavery may never be fully examined. Most whites simply want to pretend that it didn't happen, and because so many of the social ills that slavery unleashed remain resistant to change, too many of us view this period only with shame and without acknowledging the great contributions of our enslaved ancestors. But Tademy makes hard truths palatable by showing how her family was impacted by slavery.

The unstated theme throughout her work is that if the institution of slavery had been as cut-and-dry as pro-slavers portrayed it to be, it would have been easier to explain. On the one hand, those who supported the captivity of African people claimed that we were not fully human, that we were not hurt, for instance, when our families were torn apart. But for all their insistence, as the varying hues of our skin suggest, whites not only realized that we were human, but many also found us irresistible. In fact, some were willing to risk all to create lives with our people. This is one complexity that lies at the heart of Tademy's family story.

Her telling offers fresh insights about Creole life, the foods, language, and customs and certainly of life in captivity. Black captives, for instance, had to secure permission from their "owners" before accepting gifts; for they "were allowed to own nothing by law, not even themselves." In church wedding ceremonies, the vows for captives were altered to allow for the fact that their first responsibility was not to one another, but to their "masters." On the same note, the bride and groom were reminded that they might be separated at any time, in the event that they were sold to new "owners."

Following emancipation, we are able to feel with Elisabeth what it must have been like to suddenly have a surname. Tademy writes: "When for the first time they were allowed to create a last name for themselves, it was her mother, Elisabeth, and not Suzette who decided that the name would be Jackson. There was no hidden meaning to the choice, no long association with some significant event or person. Elisabeth merely said that she liked the clean sound of Jackson, that it didn't sound so French, the way everything along Cane River had her whole life. If she got to choose her own last name, she wanted it simple, a new beginning."

The subject of "passing" when light skinned black people felt forced to turn their backs on their families and choose to live as whites--has been widely explored in literature. Tademy wisely skims over these family stories and instead takes us behind the scenes of a convention that is seldom part of public discourse, but was actually commonplace. Some white men married white women as "covers" so they could be viewed as socially acceptable by other whites. Behind the scenes, many white men maintained black families, who were generally denied inheritances or recognition of any kind.

In unearthing her family's past, Tademy may have felt anguish over the pain and losses her ancestors endured. But if there is veracity in the old saying that the truth can set us free, we can be comforted by the fact that Tademy's historical explorations may have allowed her to reap what her ancestors never knew: emotional freedom, well worth the cost at any price.